"Now, listen to me, my good man," he said, calmly but emphatically, "I am the Earl of Valletort, and the lady you know as Miss Grandison is the Lady Hermione Grandison, my daughter. She has come to New York in order to marry a wretched little French adventurer named Jean de Courtois, and it is absolutely essential, for her own welfare, not to mention other considerations, that the wedding, which is to take place to-night, shall be prevented. Two European consuls and several important men in your own city have helped me to land this evening from a vessel which will not disembark her pa.s.sengers till the morning.

Therefore, it is fairly obvious that you run several sorts of risk by refusing to help me in finding my daughter, and I can hardly believe that you know nothing about her movements. . . . Come, my man, don't be both a fool and a knave, but speak!"

Rafferty, who had calmed down during this impressive harangue, took thought, and did speak.

"If yer friend had said half as much, my lord, I'd have made him wise straight away," he answered. "Miss Grandison went off at 8.30 in a taxi with her maid, Marcelle Leroux, and a strange gentleman who certainly wasn't Mr. de Courtois, my lord. They wanted to find out where a clergyman lived, an' I couldn't tell them--not about the Protestant Episcopal, I mean, my lord--but the driver of the taxi remembered that there was a minister of that persuasion living in 56th Street, near 7th Avenue, an' next door to a church. So they made a bee-line that-a-way, my lord, an' I went to see to the furnace, an'

that's all there is to it, my lord."

"You say the man was not de Courtois?" queried the Earl impatiently.

"I'm sure he wasn't the man who has pa.s.sed under that name hereabouts nearly every day for a month, my lord," said Rafferty.

"Oh, some fellow of his own kidney he has hired to a.s.sist him," put in Va.s.silan, who held fast to that theory, in part, even after he had been painfully disillusioned as to other parts of it. "Come quickly now, you, and tell our chauffeur where to take us."

If Rafferty had dared, he would have given the chauffeur directions likely to lead to further bickering, but the presence of the Earl restrained him, for Valletort, though thin and hawk-nosed, was an aristocrat in every inch, whereas Count Ladislas Va.s.silan wore the stage aspect of a successful pork-butcher. So he explained matters to the chauffeur, yet smiled grimly when the automobile wheeled away almost in the very tracks of Curtis's taxi.

"Who sez there's no such thing as luck?" he chuckled. "That valve knew what it was about when it stuck, an' my name ain't what it is if that wedding isn't over and done with by this time. An' I gev him 'my lord'

for it, too! Played the high-tone society act for all it was worth, eh, what?"

The next scene in the drama began for the Hungarian when he sat upon the sidewalk in 56th Street, and tried to pacify certain outraged blood-vessels in the nasal region. Of course, the curtain had been up some time, but, so far as he was concerned, the incidents which followed his precipitate descent from the automobile were merely catastrophic. He had seen a vivid, violet-colored star close to his eyes, had felt a crushing blow, had heard his own voice vaguely; and then he awoke to a singular sense of personal dis-ease, and to the fact that the n.o.ble Earl had nearly lost his temper.

"It was entirely your fault, Va.s.silan," his lordship was saying. "You gain nothing but lose everything by your bullying tactics. Dash it all, the fellow downed you like a prize-fighter. Who was he? Not Jean de Courtois, I'll swear, so where has de Courtois gone? Can't you stand up? It's d.a.m.n silly to sit there, nursing your nose. Our motor-car is out of action. We had better interview this clergyman, and learn exactly what has happened."

Va.s.silan rose. He was neither a coward nor a weakling, but he felt sore in mind as in body.

"What's wrog with the car?" he demanded. "Ad cad you led me ad hadkerchief?"

"That rascal who was with Hermione nearly pulled the gear levers out by the roots," said the Earl testily. "He pushed me back into the limousine--with some degree of force, too, confound him! Who can he be?"

"Suppose we idquire," growled Va.s.silan, and, mopping his nose with the Earl's handkerchief, he tugged viciously at the old-fashioned bell-pull which served the needs of visitors to the Rev. Thomas J. Hughes.

The maid-servant who took the names of the two men was surprised, and showed it, but her democratic respect for t.i.tles yielded to suspicion when she observed Count Va.s.silan's villainous guise.

"Wil-li-am!" she cried, and, when the ex-sailor appeared from the depths, she asked him to "look after the gentlemen" while she summoned Mr. Hughes.

"Cad you take me somewhere, ad supply me with a towel ad pledty of cold water?" said the Hungarian, addressing the wizened one.

Now, Jenkins was verger and pew-opener in the church as well as trusted a.s.sistant to the aged minister, but the ways and language of the fo'c's'l came back to him with irresistible force when he gazed on the Hungarian's damaged organ.

"Lord love a duck, you've had it handed to you all right," he gasped.

"How did you get it? Did you foul a lamp-post, or b.u.mp a rock, or what?"

"It is edough that I have met with ad accided," snarled the Count.

"Cad't you see that I wadt some water? Is there do place where I cad wash?"

"What you reelly want is a tap," said Jenkins sympathetically. "An' I shouldn't be surprised if a slab of raw beefsteak across yer lamps wouldn't be a bully good notion, too, or you'll have a lovely pair of mice in the morning."

Then, hearing Mr. Hughes's voice from the library, he suddenly recollected the habits of later years.

"Come with me, sir," he said, leading the way to the bas.e.m.e.nt. "I'll do my best for you."

Perhaps it was fortunate for the success of his mission that the Earl of Valletort was left free to deal with the clergyman. The Count's hectoring methods would certainly have stiffened the worthy old gentleman's back, whereas he yielded readily to the Earl's skillful handling. He was much pained at hearing that a peer's daughter should have fallen into the hands of an adventurer.

"Dear me! Dear me!" he wheezed. "This is very sad. The man looked quite a gentleman, I a.s.sure you. And he had not the least semblance to a foreigner. His name, too--John D. Curtis--is your lordship really certain of the facts?"

Now, "John" and "Jean" are sufficiently alike in sound to pa.s.s muster with the average man, who also connotes no difference between "D" and "de," but the Earl was moved to say quickly:

"Perhaps you are not accustomed to French names, Mr. Hughes?"

"No, I admit it. But, here is an unimpeachable witness," and the minister produced the license from a drawer in the writing-desk.

Lord Valletort glanced at it, and a peculiarly unpleasant scowl convulsed his aristocratic features. Hitherto, a stranger might have believed that Hermione's unfavorable picture of her father had been tinged by a high-spirited girl's hatred of the marriage which he was forcing upon her; but that fleeting expression spoke volumes. If Count Va.s.silan was of the bovine order, the Earl of Valletort savored of the tiger.

He contrived to smile, however, and the effort to figure wholly as a disconsolate parent cost him far more than he dreamed, since he examined neither the actual certificate nor the register, though both would have been submitted to his scrutiny by the bewildered Mr. Hughes.

"Thank you," he said. "I fully appreciate the position. The scoundrel has learnt how to give an English sound to his name. Probably my daughter taught him. Hard though it is for a father to say such a thing, she is the real brain behind this sordid story of intrigue and wrong-doing."

"Dear me!" gasped Mr. Hughes again. He felt that he must, indeed, be growing old. He had married many hundreds of couples during his ministerial career, and had, in many instances, compared the subsequent lives of his matrimonial clients with the impressions formed during the ceremony, yet never had he been so gravely at fault as in his summing-up of the characteristics of John D. Curtis and Hermione Beauregard Grandison.

Va.s.silan emerged from the kitchen, dripping but less gory, and the two visitors disappeared, whereupon Mr. Hughes confided his mystification to Jenkins.

But Wil-li-am shook his cadaverous head.

"Mebbe the Earl was right, an' mebbe he was wrong," he said decisively.

"I didn't size up the Earl, so I let it go at that, but I did see the other guy--beg pardon, sir, I mean the other gentleman--an' he'll be lucky if he gets to bed to-night without being clubbed by a policeman.

Someone has been at him already--hard at him--an' I'm not surprised, for his langwidge reminded me of my best days at sea."

"William!"

"What, sir? Oh, I meant my young days, of course. Now, I wonder----"

It had just occurred to Jenkins that Mr. Curtis and his bride could hardly have got clear away from 56th Street before the Earl and his companion turned up.

"Gee!" he cackled. "I wish I hadn't closed the door so d.a.m.n quick!"

Mr. Hughes raised hands of horrified protest, and Jenkins wilted.

"Sorry, sir," he stammered. "I must have got a bit wound up when I saw the foreign gentleman's nose. When I went a-whalin' on the _Star of the Sea_ we had a first mate who could man-handle anybody, but even he would have had to use a belayin' pin to stamp his trade-mark in _that_ shape. Now, the question is--_could_ it have been this here Mr.

Curtis? It reely is a pity I was so--so spry on the door."

Outside, the chauffeur had announced that he had straightened the levers sufficiently to render them serviceable, and he was directed to make for the Central Hotel, 27th Street, but he had not reached Broadway before the Earl bade him return to Mr. Hughes's residence.

What had happened was this--Lord Valletort's recollection of the physique and manner of Jean de Courtois fitted in so ill with the knock-down blow delivered to a portly individual like Ladislas Va.s.silan that he began to compare the remarks of the elevator man at 1000 59th Street with the confusion in the clergyman's mind on the question of names. Then, though the light had been dim, and his mind was given more to the recognition of his daughter than of the person accompanying her, he was conscious of a growing conviction that the French music-master was a being of an altogether different species. Va.s.silan, too, having regained some degree of self-control, confirmed him in the belief that there must be some error in their reckoning, and agreed that they might save time by interviewing Mr. Hughes again.

But when the mild eyes of the minister rested on the Count's truculent visage, and noted his water-soaked and blood-stained clothing, there was a distinct drying up in the fount of information.

"No," he said stiffly, in reply to the Earl's request that the marriage license should be produced again, "I regret that I cannot reopen that matter to-night. To-morrow, if you have any cause for complaint, you should consult the proper authorities."

"But you must allow me to emphasize the fact that the license is made out for the marriage of a man with a French name, whereas admittedly you have married my daughter to a man with an English or American name," said the Earl.

"I express no opinion on the point. Your lordship may be a.s.suming facts which are not facts."